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2/n symbol of resistance and courage during dark times. After their flight to Belgium in July 1939, they later had to flee to France during the German invasion. When they returned to Antwerp in 1940, they discovered that their house had been looted.
2/n Hessy Taft (nee Levinson) was born in Berlin in 1934 to Jewish parents Jacob and Polin Levinson who were originally from Latvia. After studying music the two married in 1928 and later immigrated to Germany.
2/n A rebel at heart, Lisette couldn’t stand the Occupation. She wore a Cross of Lorraine – the symbol of Free France – under her jacket collar. She’d take any opportunity she could to thumb her nose behind a German soldier’s back – she wasn’t shy; she’d do it in full view. 
@AuschwitzMuseum 2/n In 1942, the deportation of Jews was organized with the complicity and the support of a certain number of administrations and governments, in particular that of Marshal Pétain in France.
2/n In the autumn of 1939, things changed dramatically: 'Operation T4' started. From now on, murder through euthanasia became commonplace.
2/n Levi, who lived in Turin, worked as a chemist specializing in paints and varnishes. In 1943, in the early days of the occupation of Italy by the Germans, he joined a group of partisans in his native Piedmont. Arrested during a raid by the Fascist Republican militia
2/n children of an orphanage he was director and founder of, Dom Sierot.
2/n the Caisse des Depots et Consignations (CDC), a French public sector financial institution. The economic ‘aryanization’ was gradual and had both French and German elements. The initial discriminatory ‘statute of the Jews’ was an initiative and decision of Vichy.
2/n broadcast to the world after the women sent coded letters to their families in which they described their horrific treatment in invisible ink concocted from their own urine. One of these heroines was a Polish woman called Krystyna Czyz whose hometown of Lublin was invaded by
2/n captives in Paris were taken to the Vélodrome d’Hiver (Vel d’Hiv) in the 15th Arrondissement of Paris, near the Eiffel Tower. The Vichy government, which ruled Nazi-occupied France, was under pressure to accept orders from Berlin regarding their Jewish population. 
2/n Confined first at Auschwitz then Buchenwald, Jewish microbiologist Ludwik Fleck conspired with a ragtag team of scientists and rebels to send dud typhus vaccines to the German soldiers on the eastern front.
2/n Wladyslawa Konstanska lived in Warsaw with her son and 2 daughters. In 1940, they moved to an apartment building. There they became close friends of the Wierzbicki family who were Jewish.
2/n Arrested on July 11, 1942, Georges Koiransky was interned in the Drancy camp on July 12. He very quickly discovered the reality of this camp, made up of misery and tensions, malnutrition and idleness.
2/n Many were laborers and artisans, and worked in the ports.
2/n Marianne and Lisette were sent in 1939 to the office of the EIF (Israelite Scouts of France) to be evacuated. After the outbreak of war, Marianne's parents were interned in the Gurs camp, as German citizens. She and her sister Lisa then went to Villefranche-de-Rouergue and
2/n Inge was the only child of Berthold and Regina Auerbacher. The Auerbachers were religious Jews who lived in Kippenheim, a village in southwest Germany near the Black Forest. Inge's father was a textile merchant.
2/n In addition to this, the Nazis had increased the so-called Flight Tax, which taxed people emigrating from the country, making emigration even more expensive and therefore not an option for people of the working class. Despite these extensive barriers to emigration,
2/n when Nazi Germany invaded Poland in 1939. By the time Haft was 16, he had been separated from his family and sent to a series of concentration camps.
@auschwitzxhibit 2/n Heinrich Himmler was about to visit the extermination camp on July 17 and 18. As the figure of 962 deportees arriving by train from Amsterdam in Westerbork on July 15 was considerably smaller than the Germans had expected – they aimed to deport 4,000 Jews from the Netherlands
2/n due to a lack of spare parts, which officially could not be obtained due to the war. This meant that anyone who wanted to reach the top would have to climb over 1,600 steps.